Identifying and Advocating Best Practices in the Criminal Justice System. A Texas-Centric Examination of Current Conditions, Reform Initiatives, and Emerging Issues with a Special Emphasis on Capital Punishment.

Judges would be allowed to consider whether racial bias played a
role in the decision to seek or impose the death penalty, according to
a bill on which the N.C. House voted Tuesday evening after a long and
emotionally charged debate.

"This is a fairness bill," said Rep.
Larry Womble, the Forsyth Democrat who helped champion the bill. "If
we're going to kill people, we must be as fair and objective as we can.
This allows one more chance for justice to be blind. ... It's not a
get-out-of-jail free card for anybody."

Democrats cited studies
showing blacks are far more likely to be sentenced to death in North
Carolina than whites. Further, a defendant is 3.5 times more likely to
face the death penalty when the victim is white than when the victim is
black.

And:

The N.C. Racial Justice Act passed its second reading in the House 61-55, with every Republican and four Democrats voting no.

A
final House vote could come today, and the bill would then return to
the Senate, where it may have a difficult time gaining approval and may
require a compromise. That's because the House version left out a
section of the Senate bill designed to help remove obstacles that have
effectively halted executions for two years. Senate leaders said that
provision must be included for the Racial Justice Act to pass that
chamber.

Still, supporters rejoiced in Tuesday's vote, which they
saw as a signal that the Democrat-controlled legislature might approve
the bill.

Similar versions of the legislation had failed in past
years in the face of opposition from the majority of the state's
sheriffs and district attorneys.

The bill's chief sponsors are two Democrats from Winston-Salem:
Reps. Larry Womble and Earline Parmon. They said that the bill is meant
to ensure that capital punishment in North Carolina is carried out
fairly, and they said that it would help mend a history of
discrimination in the criminal-justice system.

"If we're going to kill people, then we must be as fair and
objective as we possibly can," Womble said in a long, impassioned
speech on the House floor.

"People do not shed their personal experiences, or their personal
prejudice, or their biases at the courtroom door. Race is still a
matter in this state," he said.

The bill's supporters pointed to data showing that the death penalty
is more likely to be handed down in cases involving white victims or
black defendants. Defendants should be allowed to use such data as
evidence in court, the bill's supporters say.

The bill was vigorously opposed by Republicans, who argued that it
would clog up the court system with unnecessary appeals, further
postpone the resumption of executions in North Carolina, and cost the
state millions of dollars.

They also objected to the bill's most controversial provision --
allowing statistical evidence from other cases as a way for a defendant
to try to prove racial bias.

Under the bill, a defendant could cite statistical disparities from
other death-penalty cases, either in the state at large, or in the
defendant's jurisdiction. If the statistics showed significant racial
disparities in how the death penalty has been applied, a judge could
block a prosecutor from pursuing the death penalty in that case, or
overturn a jury's decision to impose a death sentence.

In addition, all inmates now on death row would have the opportunity
to argue under the bill's provisions that their death sentences were
racially motivated.

If a death sentence were thrown out under the bill, it would be converted to a sentence of life in prison without parole.

A final House vote could come Wednesday. Then it would then return
to the Senate, where it could have a difficult time gaining approval
and could require a compromise. That's because the House version left
out a section of the Senate bill, approved in May, designed to help
remove obstacles that have effectively halted executions for two years.
Senate leaders said the provision was the only way that the Racial
Justice Act could pass the chamber.

The House, which approved a somewhat similar Racial Justice Act in
2007, agreed Tuesday to the measure after an intense 2½-hour discussion
on capital punishment and whether lingering racism in some areas of
society has made its way into the criminal justice system.

Lawmakers, all of them Democrats, cited situations in which
condemned prisoners have been removed from death row or lengthy prison
terms as proof that the system can create inequitable outcomes.

Former death-row inmate Robert Bacon received clemency in 2001 from
then-Gov. Mike Easley after an all-white jury sentenced the black
defendant to death while allowing a white co-defendant to avoid a death
sentence.

"Race matters then and it matters today," said Rep. Alma Adams,
D-Guilford. "Discrimination and racism (are) still around. Whether we
like it or not, race matters."

Republicans and the state district attorneys' group opposed the
bill, saying it will further delay pending executions even though
capital punishment hasn't been carried out in North Carolina since
2006.

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The StandDown Texas Project

The StandDown Texas Project was organized in 2000 to advocate a moratorium on executions and a state-sponsored review of Texas' application of the death penalty.
To stand down is to go off duty temporarily, especially to review safety procedures.

Steve Hall

Project Director Steve Hall was chief of staff to the Attorney General of Texas from 1983-1991; he was an administrator of the Texas Resource Center from 1993-1995. He has worked for the U.S. Congress and several Texas legislators. Hall is a former journalist.